Clarissa Harlowe, Samuel Richardson [black authors fiction .txt] 📗

wife!⁠—More than despise me, she herself has taken time to consider whether she does not hate me:⁠—I hate you, Lovelace, with my whole heart, said she to me but yesterday! My soul is above thee, man!⁠—Urge me not to tell thee how sincerely I think my soul above thee!⁠—How poor indeed was I then, even in my own heart!⁠—So visible a superiority, to so proud a spirit as mine!⁠—And here from below, from below indeed! from these women! I am so goaded on⁠—

Yet ’tis poor too, to think myself a machine in the hands of such wretches.⁠—I am no machine.⁠—Lovelace, thou art base to thyself, but to suppose thyself a machine.

But having gone thus far, I should be unhappy, if after marriage, in the petulance of ill humour, I had it to reproach myself, that I did not try her to the utmost. And yet I don’t know how it is, but this lady, the moment I come into her presence, half-assimilates me to her own virtue.⁠—Once or twice (to say nothing of her triumph over me on Sunday night) I was prevailed upon to fluster myself, with an intention to make some advances, which, if obliged to recede, I might lay upon raised spirits: but the instant I beheld her, I was soberized into awe and reverence: and the majesty of her even visible purity first damped, and then extinguished, my double flame.

What a surprisingly powerful effect, so much and so long in my power she! so instigated by some of her own sex, and so stimulated by passion I!⁠—How can this be accounted for in a Lovelace!

But what a heap of stuff have I written!⁠—How have I been run away with!⁠—By what?⁠—Canst thou say by what?⁠—O thou lurking varletess conscience!⁠—Is it thou that hast thus made me of party against myself?⁠—How camest thou in?⁠—In what disguise, thou egregious haunter of my more agreeable hours?⁠—Stand thou, with fate, but neuter in this controversy; and, if I cannot do credit to human nature, and to the female sex, by bringing down such an angel as this to class with and adorn it, (for adorn it she does in her very foibles), then I am all yours, and never will resist you more.

Here I arose. I shook myself. The window was open. Always the troublesome bosom-visitor, the intruder, is flown.⁠—I see it yet!⁠—And now it lessens to my aching eye!⁠—And now the cleft air is closed after it, and it is out of sight!⁠—and once more I am

Robert Lovelace.

Letter 203 Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford, Esq.

Tuesday, May 23

Well did I, and but just in time to conclude to have done with Mrs. Fretchville and the house: for here Mennell has declared, that he cannot in conscience and honour go any farther.⁠—He would not for the world be accessory to the deceiving of such a lady!⁠—I was a fool to let either you or him see her; for ever since ye have both had scruples, which neither would have had, were a woman to have been in the question.

Well, I can’t help it!

Mennell has, however, though with some reluctance, consented to write me a letter, provided I will allow it to be the last step he shall take in this affair.

I presumed, I told him, that if I could cause Mrs. Fretchville’s woman to supply his place, he would have no objection to that.

None, he says⁠—But is it not pity⁠—

A pitiful fellow! Such a ridiculous kind of pity his, as those silly souls have, who would not kill an innocent chicken for the world; but when killed to their hands, are always the most greedy devourers of it.

Now this letter gives the servant the smallpox: and she has given it to her unhappy vapourish lady. Vapourish people are perpetual subjects for diseases to work upon. Name but the malady, and it is theirs in a moment. Ever fitted for inoculation.⁠—The physical tribe’s milch-cows.⁠—A vapourish or splenetic patient is a fiddle for the doctors; and they are eternally playing upon it. Sweet music does it make them. All their difficulty, except a case extraordinary happens, (as poor Mrs. Fretchville’s, who has realized her apprehensions), is but to hold their countenance, while their patient is drawing up a bill of indictment against himself;⁠—and when they have heard it, proceed to punish⁠—the right word for prescribe. Why should they not, when the criminal has confessed his guilt?⁠—And punish they generally do with a vengeance.

Yet, silly toads too, now I think of it. For why, when they know they cannot do good, may they not as well endeavour to gratify, as to nauseate, the patient’s palate?

Were I a physician, I’d get all the trade to myself: for Malmsey, and Cyprus, and the generous product of the Cape, a little disguised, should be my principal doses: as these would create new spirits, how would the revived patient covet the physic, and adore the doctor!

Give all the paraders of the faculty whom thou knowest this hint.⁠—There could but one inconvenience arise from it. The apothecaries would find their medicines cost them something: but the demand for quantities would answer that: since the honest nurse would be the patient’s taster; perpetually requiring repetitions of the last cordial julap.

Well, but to the letter⁠—Yet what need of further explanation after the hints in my former? The widow can’t be removed; and that’s enough: and Mennell’s work is over; and his conscience left to plague him for his own sins, and not another man’s: and, very possibly, plague enough will give him for those.

This letter is directed, To Robert Lovelace, Esq. or, in his absence, to his Lady. She has refused dining with me, or seeing me: and I was out when it came. She opened it: so is my lady by her own consent, proud and saucy as she is.

I am glad at my heart that it came before we entirely make up. She would else perhaps have concluded it to be contrived for a delay: